


tell it to the concrete, tell it to the wind

by autoeuphoric (FreezingRayne)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, Light BDSM, M/M, Mind Control, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 06:08:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10353846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreezingRayne/pseuds/autoeuphoric
Summary: “He’s the parts of you that you’re afraid of.”"Of course I’m afraid! When I get migraines I rip people’s brains apart!”“That’s not the part I mean.”(adventures in jet lag, culture shock, self-hatred, and the violent, virile embodiment of all your darkest desires making commentary in your brain)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cerasi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerasi/gifts).



> one million thanks to cerasi for allowing me to write the noiao of my dreams. she wanted Aoba attempting to adjust to life with Noiz, and all that would entail. 
> 
> mind the tags--this is pretty standard DMMD stuff, including Scrap, threats of sexual violence, and people engaging in risky behavior. 
> 
> keep in mind that I'm appropriating Theo's existence from the drama CD, but not the canon of it. I'm manufacturing their meeting on my own 'cause i'm a grown woman and i can do whatever i want.

My first night with Noiz I don’t get much sleep. Well, my _first_ first night with Noiz I don’t sleep at all, because we’re in that hotel and he keeps me up until my eyes burn and my limbs tremble, and as the light creeps in beneath the curtains (that I _finally_ convince him to close) I choke, “Noiz, please.” 

His voice is just one ragged gasp. “We can sleep on the plane.” 

He sleeps. I don’t. The man across the row from us offers me an ambien, but I never know how drugs will interact with my migraine pills. Usually they just don’t do anything at all. Instead I watch the miles of dark water pass underneath us. It looks close enough to reach out and touch, though I know that if I fell, I would fall for a long time.

Thinking about my meds gives me a pulse of homesickness for Gran, but I haven’t even been away from her for 24 hours. And it’ll be good to get away from the island--go somewhere without the ruins of Platinum Jail crouching on the skyline, just waiting for me to turn and look. 

_“You sure about that?”_

I jerk in my seat. “What!” 

Noiz blinks one eye open. “What’s wrong?” He is completely alert even though I know I woke him up. 

“It’s--.” My heart beats so fast I feel it in my throat. “It’s nothing. I-I’m fine. Tired.” 

I’m an awful liar, but Noiz doesn’t say anything. He just closes his eyes and puts his hand on mine, thumb tracing the sensitive underside of my wrist. 

I pretend to sleep, and I pretend someone with a very familiar voice hadn’t just whispered in my ear. 

-

Munich’s airport is five times the size of Midorijima’s, and full of people who look like Noiz. I’ve never seen so many foreigners in one place. Though I guess I’m the foreigner now. 

I stick close to him, my exhaustion weighing me down as much as my suitcase. I don’t have much--just some clothes, my coil, and my meds. Gran is going to ship me the rest of my stuff, I guess. Ren is asleep in my bag; international law says allmates need to stay powered off in airports and on planes, so I don’t even have the soft, reassuring weight of him in my arms. I regret everything about the last twenty four hours. Except for Noiz. I’m glad to be with him, but--

 _but you hate what he turns you into. a follower. vulnerable._

I ignore my swirling thoughts. It’s just anxiety.

_come on, asshole. are you really going to pretend I’m not here?_

Hell yes I am. 

-

Noiz’s house? Is fucking huge. Set back from the road up a winding gravel path, bordered by trees and spreading gardens. I know places like this exist from movies and books, but it’s so outside of anything we have in the Old District it’s like another planet. A planet where everybody is pale and rich and won’t make eye contact. I am so out-of-place it feels like an out of body experience. 

When we walk inside the house I’m glad we stayed at that hotel, so I have something to compare it to besides the Oval Tower.

“Noiz--.” I take a nervous step closer to him, resisting the ridiculous impulse to grab his hand. “Your house is so big I’m worried about getting lost.” I hope it sounds like I’m kidding.

Years of isolation have left the language of Noiz’s expressions really subtle, but it’s a language I recognize, even if I can’t quite speak it yet. His eyebrows are doing that quizzical indent; he doesn’t understand why I’m uncomfortable. That’s the thing about Noiz. Unfamiliar places and new experiences don’t phase him. He seems to thrive on them, taking command until he can understand. I wish I could be like that. He’s four years younger than me, but in some ways he’s so ahead of me it feels like I’ll never catch up. 

He tips my chin up, thumb brushing my jaw. “You look wrecked.” 

My laugh is blurry, like I might cry. “You kept me up all night.” 

Noiz grins. “Welcome home.” 

-

I expect to collapse into exhausted blankness as soon as I crawl into bed beside Noiz, but I can’t fall asleep here either. It’s just too quiet. In the Old District there were always neighbors watching TV, the hum of cheap wiring, cars swishing through puddles. But here there’s only Noiz’s slow breaths and the yawning knowledge of endless empty rooms around us. His parents are away for the summer, and his brother doesn’t live here.

Noiz lived here. For years. All alone. 

I roll onto my side, trying to get comfortable on the big soft bed. I know I just said that it’s too quiet, but with Noiz lying next to me it’s also too loud. I’m not used to sleeping with someone else in the room. Apart from Ren, who doesn’t breathe. If I were at home we could talk--Ren and I. Either that or I could open the window and scoop him up, carry us both to the roof and lie back on the loose slats, watching the lights of Platinum Jail cast shadows on the clouds, breathing in the night chill and listening for the familiar modulation of digital music as a Rhyme field opened up on a sidestreet. 

Of course, there are no more lights in Platinum Jail and according the news Usui’s servers went offline the moment the tower fell. Together Noiz and I upended the structure of the island, smashed it to pieces along with any illusions I’d had that my life was ever going to make sense. 

_of course you don’t make sense, idiot. you’re broken. fractured. you put your boyfriend back together but you forgot about us._

I press my hands over my ears and curl up beneath the blankets.

 _oh, real mature._

Fuck off. 

Eventually, I sleep. Or I doze. Part of me is still aware of the room and Noiz. But my dreams show me my island. Platinum Jail. Glitter. A burning forest, a blue yukata, and a song that wails with a brutal, piercing sadness. I see a shining needle, snarling teeth, a bolt of lightning cracking jagged across the sky. Everything is loud and hot and frightening, 

And there are the hands. On my back, my thighs, my ass. They twist in my hair and pin my wrists and ankles down. I don’t know whose they are, only that they burn and they are everywhere. 

“Right, but you’re everybody’s, aren’t you?” It comes from all around me, the air growing a set of lungs and a sibilant voice. Another hand joins in, creeping over my chest to wrap around my throat. “But mostly you’re mine.” 

Fingers squeeze, and even though I know this is a dream and I can’t die, I panic. I wake up with a thrashing jolt and roll off the bed, hitting the carpet on all fours. The dream’s wake is so vivid I expect the hands to follow me. But I’m all alone panting on the floor, and the room is quiet around me. 

I brace myself for Noiz’s reaction to my flailing, but he must be a heavy sleeper. 

-

I pull myself into the bathroom and flip on the light, my hands shaking as I reach for the faucet. My reflection stares back at me like I’m a stranger. The thick, choking certainty that I don’t belong here curls through me. Does Noiz know what he let into his house? Does he know what he spent hours fucking in that hotel? 

“A monster?” My breaths come out in shaky puffs that sound like laughter. “A lunatic?” 

Blotchy patches of red paint my chest and stomach. Heat rash? Or souvenirs of my dream? My hair is sweat-plastered to my neck and shoulders, and even though most of its sensation has faded, peeling it away feels viscerally horrific, like shedding skin. 

“This pretty, delicate skin? I agree. Just get rid of it.” 

My stomach slithers with raw dread. I don’t hear the voice in my head this time--my lips are moving. I stare into the mirror and the other Aoba looks back at me. My hand rises to caress my cheek. 

“I’m still here,” my mouth says. “You thought l would fall with the tower but _I’m still here_.” 

Pain rips through my head. I sob, scrabbling at the counter to stay upright, curling forward to vomit into the sink. I haven’t eaten in hours, so all that comes up is stringy yellow acid. He makes a slick, disgusted noise and when I look back up I’m alone. 

 

I make the shower as hot as I can stand and prop myself against the tile wall. The pain has mostly disappeared, but the echo lingers in threat. Why is he here? Why does he keep showing up? I’m not in danger and I don’t need to use Scrap-- 

A hand touches my back and I yelp, slipping, sliding against the slick tile. I thud back into a hard body and for a moment I’m convinced I’m going to look back over my shoulder and see a pair of blazing amber eyes. 

“Careful,” Noiz says. Steam sticks his hair to his forehead, and I’m close enough to see traces of the holes in his eyebrow. 

“Noiz--.” My pulse thrashes, clashing sensations sizzling through me. His body feels cool against the heat of the water. 

“Hey.” He kisses just below my ear, the soft place that makes me shiver. “Can’t sleep?” 

I shake my head, wet hair tangling in my eyes. “I had a nightmare, I think.” 

Noiz runs his hands down my sides, thumbs drawing slow patterns on my hips. Everything feels close and secret in here, with the shower door closed and the world shut out. “You’re safe now.” 

I shake my head again, because I’m not, I’m not safe anywhere--not as long as the other Aoba exists--but I don’t resist when he tips my chin back to kiss me. I miss the tongue ring sometimes, but kissing him is still electric. 

He pulls back, water beading on his lips. “Are you sick?” 

Oh, fuck. I totally forgot and kissed him with my puke-breath. “Sorry! I--.” I try to pull away but his fingers on my jaw don’t let me. “I don’t think I’m sick just--just jet-lagged.” Ren told me that you can experience disorientation and nausea while your body scrambles to understand how it can be in another place so fast. 

“Hmm.” Noiz’s chest rumbles against my back. “Are you sure?” His hand leaves my chin and fans out across my chest. 

“Yes, I’m--.” He twists my nipples. “I’m!” My breath whistles in through my teeth and I let my head drop back onto his shoulder. Usually I’m embarrassed in situations like this--I don’t know what to say or where to look or where to put my hands, but with Noiz behind me, holding me up, I don’t have to worry about that. 

His hand smoothes back up my chest, fingers wrapping around my throat. He doesn’t squeeze or try to choke me, but it sends a sharp flash of arousal deep into my guts, along with the memory of the nightmare. Fear flares up and my cock twitches. I’m a mess. 

“Noiz--.” He kisses my throat, my jaw, licks across the shell of my ear. “Noiz!” 

The hand not wrapped around my neck fumbles with something on the rack of soaps and bottles, and when he wraps it around my dick it’s slick. I choke as he gives me a hard pump. “Good?” he murmurs, rubbing his palm across the head. 

I nod. I’m so keyed up that it takes hardly any time at all until I’m gasping, writhing in his grip, trying to push against his hand. He holds me still, forcing me to endure it as his strokes get smooth and slow, stoking the fire inside me only to let it die back down. By the time he finally lets me come I’m shaking and clawing at his hands. My legs give out and I slide to the shower floor. 

He looks down at me. “Feel any better?” 

I laugh. “I can’t believe there’s still hot water.” 

Noiz grins. “One good thing about this house, I guess.” His fingers curl in my soaking hair, pulling me irresistibly closer to the evidence of how much it turns him on to tease me. 

Well. Since I’m down here. 

\--

The next time I wake up the room is bright and Noiz has been replaced by Ren, curled up on the bedspread next to me. I yawn so widely my jaw cracks. 

His eyes open. “Aoba.” 

“Good morning. What time is it?” 

“Just past one.”

“Oh, well I guess it’s ‘good afternoon’, then.” I slept awhile, which explains the fuzzy sense of half-reality, a bit like after using Scrap. But I hadn’t used it, had I? I didn’t lose any time and I didn’t make Noiz do anything. Besides come. 

“Someone is waiting for you downstairs.” 

“Someone? Noiz?” 

“Not Noiz.” 

A pulse of anxiety makes me want to slide back into bed and pull the blankets over my face, but instead I force myself to get dressed. Eventually I’m going to have to interact with people who aren’t Noiz. I can’t stay in this room forever. 

_noiz did. That’s why he’s such a horny fucking weirdo._

“Can you navigate for me, Ren?” I joke, ignoring the dickhead in my brain. 

Ren stands up on the pillow. “This building is not large enough to have schematics on the net. But I will do my best.” 

 

I do let Ren lead, although I pick him up on the way down the stairs. This house was not built for children, animals, or small robot dogs. We cross a hall lined with windows looking out on a pattern of trees and flowerbeds, purple and white blossoms moving in little starts in the breeze. On the island there are public parks but they’re mostly just grass and overgrown plots of weeds. The only cultivated gardens I’ve ever seen have been in window boxes. 

Ren brings me to a sunny room with an even better view, two glass doors standing open onto the lawn, gauzy curtains caught in the breeze. On a round table two places are set, pitchers of juice gleaming in the sunlight, dishes of berries and jam heaped like jewels. My throat closes up because it’s all so impressive and foreign and I don’t belong here. 

I don’t have time to get too worked up, though, because someone is standing with his back to me, looking out into the garden. At first I think Ren had been making a joke and that it is Noiz, but this guy is younger, his hair a lighter blond. More notably, as soon as he sees me he breaks into a glowing smile. 

“Good morning!” he says, and that seems to be the extent of his Japanese, because it’s followed by rapid German. I look at Ren in alarm. 

He sits down on the carpet. “Activating translation mode.” His eyes gleam amber. “You must be Aoba! I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I’m Theo. My brother--. “

“Oh!” Of course, Noiz’s younger brother, the boy he protected from bullies in his memories. The one who had reminded me a little bit of myself at his age, cowering behind Koujaku as he wailed on the boys who had pushed me into the dirt and pulled my hair. “Good--good to meet you! Are you staying here too? Noiz didn’t say anything about--.” 

Theo’s mouth opens, closes, and he holds up a finger in the universal sign of ‘hold on a damn second’. Rummaging in an open school bag, he pulls out a roly-poly orange tabby cat. He sets it on the table beside a basket of pastries. It looks from me, to Ren, to Theo. It gives a lazy lick to its paw and says something in German, eyes lighting up crystal green. An allmate. A very recent model, I think. 

“Ahhh.” Theo nods and responds quickly, indicating the other place at the table with his hand. “Yes, yes,” Ren translates, “The little brother. And no, I don’t live here during the school year, and technically I should be in class right now.” His little giggle and shrug come a few seconds before Ren translates it; I am getting everything on a delay and it’s disorienting. “Join me?” 

He’s left holding his hand out for awhile before Ren gets to the invitation, a blue and silver ring glimmering in the noon light. 

“Oh, I--.” My stomach gives a huge growl on cue. “Sure, cool. Um, I mean, thanks very much.” 

Gran would be appalled at my manners, it’s just...Theo is really good looking. So is Noiz, but Theo is smiling like he can’t think of anywhere he’d rather be. I know Noiz is always glad to see me, it’s just harder to tell. Noiz’s good looks kind of creep up on you. Theo’s are….right there. 

_tell me about it. look at that sweet mouth. think he sucks dick as good as his brother?_

“Oh my god,” I say aloud. 

The cat allmate translates and Theo frowns. “Everything alright?”

“Umm, yes, everything’s fine. Sorry. Just--.” _Can you not?_ I think it very hard. _He’s like seventeen years old_. 

_so? noiz was nineteen when we deflowered him in a hospital bed._

_Shut up! And ‘we’ didn’t do anything._

_you’re right, you’re right. that was all me._

Theo is holding up a coffee pot and watching me argue with the entity in my brain. “Sorry,” I say again. “I’m a little--a little jet lagged.” 

Theo nods sympathetically. “I know you just got in yesterday, but I really wanted to meet you. And I have calculus today so...an excellent day to skip.” He grins, and I find myself smiling along with him. Fuck, he’s cute. Which I immediately feel guilty for thinking. 

_oh, come on. you aren’t cheating if all you do is think. and who knows? i bet the Haas brothers would be into an aoba sandwich. and, you know. there’s one for each of us. you can have the grouchy one, i’ll take the cute little one who’s all eager to please._

Haas? What’s that--

_didn’t you see his passport? his last name is Haas. i can’t believe you moved in with a dude whose name you don’t even know. we’re a hot fucking mess._

I ignore him, holding out my cup to let Theo pour me coffee. Ren and the tabby allmate are getting acquainted; they sniff at each other like animals would, but I know that the real communication is going on digitally. Allmates have ways of interacting that humans can’t access--I’ve been told they’re a bit like Rhyme-fields, but without the possibility of some rando coming by and attacking you. 

“What’s your allmate’s name?” I ask. 

“Harimanne. She and I haven’t been together for a very long time, but we get along well. Your allmate is Ren, right? I like it. Very retro.” 

I laugh. “Yeah. Well, I could never give Ren up. You know, when Noiz met me, he would go on about how weird it was that I was so attached to my allmate, but he really does seem to care about his…” 

I trail off. Theo is frowning again, and so is Harimanne. Well. As much as a cat can frown.

“ _Noiz_ ,” he says. “You said that before. Who is that?” 

I pause with a pastry halfway to my mouth. It looks good, golden and flakey and glazed with honey and some sort of nut. “Um. What?” 

“Noiz...is that....” Ren waits as Theo gathers his thoughts. “Do you mean Wilhelm?” 

Something distant and cold opens up inside of me. “Um.” 

“My brother. Wilhelm. You call him…Noiz? Why?” 

“I…” Suddenly the pastry in front of me doesn’t look so appealing after all. I set it down. “Yeah. I. That’s what he told me to call him.” 

Theo cocks his head. “Hmm? Odd. Anyway--I was surprised when Wilhelm told us he’d met someone, he was always so--.” 

“Isolated?” I say. 

Theo jerks back like I’ve slapped him, even before Ren translates. He can hear the frost in my voice. Theo might have only been a child when Noiz’s family had locked him away, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. _He _didn’t get swallowed up in the dark corners of Noiz’s mind, _he_ didn’t have to feel that sea of deformed bodies reaching out to him for salvation. __

He pours more coffee for me, then for himself. “Yes. That.” He sets the pot down carefully and places his hand on Harimanne’s head, scratching behind her ears. I recognize the gesture. I always reach for Ren when I’m uncomfortable. 

“What did he tell you about me?” I ask. 

Theo spreads jam onto a piece of toast. “Well, he just told our parents that he met someone in Japan and he was bringing him back to Munich.” He sets his knife down carefully, delicately. “And he told me that you saved him.” 

-

Theo sticks around for about an hour after that, and we trade awkward conversation, made all the more so by the fact we have to speak through our allmates. I probably should start taking a German course online or something. Just add it to the growing list of stuff that’s stressing me out. 

“You aren’t jet lagged,” Ren says as I carry him back up the steps after Theo leaves. 

I look down at him. “Huh?” 

The hall is dim enough for his eyes to glow. “Well, I suppose you are jet lagged, but that is not what is causing your symptoms. Vomiting, sleeplessness, disorientation, lost time--that all sounds like--.” 

“Scrap, I know.” I hold him tighter to my chest, the warm, mechanical whirr of him as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. “But I haven’t used it! I don’t know what’s going on!” 

“Really.” 

I blow out a breath and Ren scrunches up his nose. “Yes, really.” 

“I think you are lying, Aoba.” 

I sigh. This is another thing that Ren does that Noiz thinks is weird--he argues with me. Allmates are designed to be extensions of their masters, they aren’t supposed to have opinions of their own. I know Ren isn’t an ordinary allmate. I’m not stupid. 

_well, that’s debatable_

\--But I’m not a ordinary person, so it’s really just fate that Ren and I found each other. 

_you are so fucking dense_.

-  
When I get back to Noiz’s room-- _our_ room--I have messages, lots of them. My coil is pulsing with a steady white light. Two from Gran, one each from Hage-san, Mizuki, and Clear, and...oh, eleven from Koujaku. 

“You didn’t tell him you were leaving, did you?” Ren asks. Allmate faces don’t have the range of motion to look reproving, but he’s pulling it off, I swear to god. 

“I was a little distracted,” I mumble, flushing. Ren was in sleep mode when we were at the hotel, but he’s keyed into my biorhythms. He knew I spent all night getting fucked against a window.

 _and over a chair, on our back with our legs in the air, in the shower_... 

I tap ‘return call’ on my coil, then send it to the house system instead. The quality is a lot better. A screen appears floating over the bed, and Koujaku picks up as soon as the call connects. 

“Aoba?” His face fills up the screen in a frantic blur. “Aoba!” 

Koujaku’s hair is slicked to his neck and chest in shiny trails, the scar across the bridge of his nose unusually vivid. He must have just gotten out of the shower. It’s about 9pm back in Midorijima. He’s probably getting ready to go out. 

“Yeah, it’s me.” Who the heck else would it be? I probably should have waited until I was in a better mood to call him back, but all those notifications overwhelmed me. “How’s it going?” 

Koujaku makes a disbelieving noise, gathering his wet hair over one shoulder. “Not great, Aoba! I went over to Heibon this morning and Hage-san told me you quit just out of the blue! I thought he must be getting senile, but then Tae-san said you’d left. For Germany. With _Noiz_ of all people. For good.” 

“Not for good, I’m still going to visit home--.” 

Koujaku talks right over me. “I told her she must be wrong, there’s no way Aoba would be so impulsive and stupid to run away with some foreign teenager who broke into his house and wrecked his shit!” 

_watch your mouth, kj_

“He isn’t a teenager,” I mumble. “Anymore.” 

_oh wow, great comeback. why are you the one in control of our mouth?_

Koujaku gapes at me. “You really--I can’t believe--.” He rubs at his eyes. “With Noiz?” 

I shrug. 

“And the two of you, you’re really--.” 

My face heats. “That’s none of your business.” 

“Oh, right. I’m just your best and oldest friend, but it’s none of my business when you start fucking some asshole who kidnaps you--” 

_well to be fair, he’s fucking our asshole_

Koujaku lets out a noisy breath. “I know you and Noiz went through a lot of together. But Aoba, trauma can make you feel close to someone even when you really aren’t. How much do you actually know about Noiz? Do you even know his last name?” 

“Of course I do!” I snap back, as Sly Blue laughs in my brain. 

“And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, Aoba! I mean, I knew you were visiting him when he was injured, and I know the two of you were getting along, but for you to just agree to become his kept man--.” 

Sly Blue’s amusement turns to rage in a sizzling flash and for once I’m in agreement. “I’m not a little kid anymore, Koujaku! I don’t need to ask you for permission and I don’t need you to protect me!” I twist my fingers in the bedspread, body shaking with adrenaline. “I knocked down the Oval Tower! Me and Noiz! We destroyed Toue! We freed the island! I’m tired of you throwing our friendship in my face like it gives you the right to control me! _NO ONE CAN CONTROL ME!_ ” 

It flows out of me in a wrenching flood, like a scab torn off and fresh blood flowing in a torrent. My voice hangs in the air, resonating like a bell, and even a thousand miles away across an ocean, Koujaku goes rigid. 

Oh no. 

_oh yes_. 

Scrambling for my coil, I end the call. I don’t know what else to do; I don’t know what else I might say. Scrap definitely works over the phone. I used it for years at work without even knowing I was doing it, even if the worst I ever did was make people buy shit they didn’t actually want. 

I bury my head in my hands, curling my legs up against my chest. “Calm down, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything, but even if you did, fucker would deserve it. Who the hell does he think he is?” 

_Just shut up, okay? I can’t deal with you right now_. 

“You called me Sly Blue, back there.” 

_What?_

“In your head. You called me Sly Blue. Your Rhymer tag. I’m not him, you know? I’m you. If I’m Sly Blue, so are you.” 

“Just leave me alone.” 

I realize that I have been saying half of this conversation aloud and half in my head, but which half is which I’m not even sure anymore. And I’m too exhausted to care. 

-

Noiz comes home in the evening and we have dinner, but it’s obvious that his day has been as bad as mine. His jaw is tight and his shoulders clench inward at every loud noise. He apologizes for being gone all day and promises that work will slow down in the next week. I shrug and say it’s fine, because what else can I do? I knew he had a job when I agreed to come with him--he showed up in a suit to show how absolute his transformation had been. 

I lie on the bed and listen to him in the bathroom, the faucet running and the fan turning off. He comes in, light gleaming on his bare chest, hair slicked back from his eyes after his shower. He’s gained a little weight since he's been away, which is good, considering he’d been in the hospital. But even before that--he told me he only ever ate pizza and pasta, but mostly it looked like he ate not much at all. 

He lies down next to me and my heart starts to beat, his presence sending heat skittering over my skin. He reaches for me, painting his thumb across my cheek, but his eyes are glazed over with exhaustion. We only manage to kiss for a few minutes, before his breathing goes long and languid, and he’s asleep with his head on my shoulder. 

\--

The next morning we have a fight. 

Noiz is getting dressed for work, a process that mystifies me. The only suit I’ve ever worn is the one he forced me into back at the hotel. I’ve realized my headphones are missing.

“Fuck,” I say. “I must have left them on the plane. Fuck!” 

Noiz adjusts his cufflinks in the mirror. It’s so weird to look at him now and know he has three piercings in his dick and thing for biting. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll buy you new ones on my way home from work.” 

“Huh? No!” 

His reflection raises an eyebrow at me. “Or you can just order some online and get a courier drone. I’ll leave you one of my cards.” 

“I--that’s--.” I flush. “I don’t want new headphones, I want the old ones.” 

Noiz frowns. “You can probably find the same model.” 

“That isn’t the issue!” 

“Then what is?”

“It’s--.” I wrap my arms around my stomach. “I don’t want you to just buy me stuff. You--you already flew me first class across the world, and now you’re giving me a place to live, and--and clothes--.” 

Noiz turns from the mirror. “I didn’t buy you clothes.” 

“You bought me a ten thousand yen suit!” I shout. 

“Yeah, but you didn’t ask for that. And you didn’t even like it.” 

“I--I liked it!” 

_liar. we looked like a douchebag_. 

I press my palm against my eye; maybe I can force him out through an ear. “I just...it feels so weird, you just buying me stuff. I feel…” I can’t bring myself to say 'really worthless' out loud. Koujaku’s little snarl of disgust when he’d said ‘kept man’ keeps floating around my head. 

_fuck that, that bastard is just jealous. if he had his way, we’d be naked in his bed, sucking his sexually confused dick, and just generally dealing with a lot of shitty drama. let the boy buy us shit_. 

Shut up! 

_personally, i think we’d look amazing in diamonds_. 

“I don’t get you,” Noiz says. The same thing he’d said when I’d told him Ren was important to me, and when I’d insisted on treating his wounds despite the fact he’d been nothing but rude and a bother. A guy like Noiz doesn’t understand why anyone would do something without anything in it for themselves. 

“I don’t get you. I’ve got a ton of money. I like giving you stuff. And it would be even better if I could give you money and you could get stuff for yourself, because I’m not great at picking out gifts.”

-

He leaves me a credit chip for my coil. I leave it on the table beside the lamp. Then I call a taxi and go in search of my missing headphones. 

At the airport, no one speaks Japanese and there are no allmates to translate. There’s a terminal at the counter, but it’s only keyed to French and English. All I am is a grouchy foreign boy attempting to mime headphones. It probably looks like I’m pretending to pull up an imaginary hood. I leave before someone calls security, mood worse than ever. 

So I’ve got no headphones and all the conversations around me pulse in a roar of white noise, grating against my nerves. My head pounds, pain blossoming behind my eyes. My passenger has started up a running monologue in my thoughts and I’m too exhausted to block him out. 

_i don’t see what the huge fucking deal is. this is amazing. let him buy us stuff and then spend all night fucking our brains out. i honestly can’t think of anything better to do with our time. what did we have on that fucking island that was so worth staying for?_

“You’re an asshole,” I hiss, glad that this cab is driverless. All I need is someone to witness me arguing with myself. 

_why did we come here if not for a sugar daddy? what, are we gonna get a job? write a book? go to college?_

“Maybe I will.” 

He laughs, a soft, trilling sound. _you’re not gonna be able to repress me forever, you know. eventually I’ll get free, and then…_ Pain rolls through my head in a quick blaze. 

The taxi grinds to a stop. I look out, expecting to see the gates of Noiz’s front drive, but instead there’s just a blank brick wall and gutter full of plastic bags, soaked through with slimy drizzle. 

“This isn’t the address I gave you,” I say. 

A blue panel lights up on the dashboard. “No credit remaining on chip. Please exit the taxi or insert alternate mode of payment.” 

I think of Noiz’s credit chip lying beside the lamp in the bedroom, left there out of pure spite. “I don’t even know where we are!” 

The taxi door opens. “Failure to comply may result in imprisonment and a fine up to--.” 

I grab Ren’s bag and stumble out onto the street. “Okay, okay, fuck you too.” 

The taxi pulls smugly away from the curb, leaving me on a rapidly dimming street in the middle of downtown Munich. 

_well. this blows_. 

I pull my hood up against the humid, misty drizzle. “No fucking shit.” 

 

According to the map on my coil, I am six and a half miles from Noiz’s house. Evening is creeping up, and the weather is weird as hell. It’s windy but humid, the air settling on me in suffocating waves. I shove my hands in my pockets and start walking. 

_just like old times_. 

I close my eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I just want to go to sleep and never wake up, or at least not wake up until I no longer have to deal with any decisions or human interaction. 

_back in our rhyme days. before we were a boring loser who sucked. we would walk down the street and people would get the fuck out of our way._

“I don’t remember that.” 

_yes, we do. and we could remember even more if you could just man the fuck up and accept it_.

Someone whistles from across the street, and at first I don’t think about it. But then it comes again, and I make the mistake of turning around, and I see them. This is a long, narrow stretch of beaten-up road between two main streets, drizzle pooling greasy in potholes, reflecting the grey blur of the sky. The rain turns the light misty and strange. 

They’re speaking German so I can’t understand the content, but I know this vibe. It’s the same across all languages. A magnetic field of potential violence. 

He can feel it too. His pressure builds in my head and flickers shivery radiance to my fingertips. Before I use Scrap I always feel like my throat and chest have been coated in plastic wrap, bound up tight, but at the same time like I’m wide open--a hole in the middle of me for the wind to pass through. 

_come on_ , he begs me, a dog jerking at a leash. _just fuck them up_. 

I keep going. If I can just make it to where there’s people--

A hard weight hits me in the lower back. I’m not expecting it and I only just get my hands out in front of me before I hit the pavement. Pain shoots up into my wrists and I smell metal as the gravel tears up my palms. They laugh. Hatred and frustration melt together in my guts. I want to curl into a ball and cry in the dirt. 

_don’t. let me out. let me help us. let me save us._

A boot slams into my ribs and I shout into the concrete as much from anger as from pain. More laughter, and then fingers anchor in my hair, wrenching my head back. The sensation is gone, but just the threat of it happening makes me panic. When I open my mouth it says, “ _Finally_ ,” and when I open my eyes the world is a bright, textured thing. 

I arch my back and let my mouth drop open in a desperate, needy moan, making sure these shitheels know exactly what kind of maniac they’re dealing with. They let go of me and I pull myself onto my knees, wiping bloody palms onto the thighs of my jeans. 

There are four of them, two armed with bats and one with a switchblade. The closest one has nothing but his bare hands and about fifty pounds on me. They could all be clones, or different parts of one giant, many-limbed monster. 

But they aren’t. They’re just people. And they’ve never seen a monster like me. 

“Should have brought an army,” I say, though it won’t help. Not with what I’ve got planned. 

The one who’d kicked me lunges. 

“ _STOP_.” 

He freezes in place, one arm outstretched. He can’t understand what I said, but that doesn’t matter. Scrap is about the voice, not the words; it’s my will penetrating between their eyes and lighting up their tiny brains, filling them up with me. 

“You guys are friends, right?” 

They stare, transfixed. 

“ _ANSWER ME_.” 

A ripple rolls through them, matching looks of terror blossoming as I fill them with the desire to do what I want. I could make them love me or hate me, bare their throats one at a time for me to slit. 

I say, “Actually, you guys aren’t friends. You hate each other and it would be better if you were all dead.” 

I stand and watch them tear into one another. Metal cracks bone, nails gouge eyes, and when Noiz finds me I have my foot on the last one’s throat, the world lit up in a blaze of red and rain and manic euphoria. 

\--  
“It’s the other one, isn’t it.” Noiz’s fingers tap the steering wheel in time to the swish of the windshield wipers. I’m sitting next to him, gasping and trembling as I fight down the tide of unconsciousness. I watch the the traffic light change from red to green. I can’t catch my breath. 

The silhouetted print of Noiz’s face against the dizzy miasma of city lights makes him look artificial, a cardboard cut-out of Noiz. “Aoba, answer me. Or I’m going to take you to the hospital.” 

I shake my head, sucking in a few breaths before I can choke out, “No.” I don’t know what I’m responding to. My jacket and coil are gone, my clothes are damp all the way through, and I don’t know what is rain and what is sweat. My head doesn’t hurt--stunningly, miraculously--but it does feel warm, an engine that has been running for too long. “Can you--can you just drive?” 

Noiz’s tie is loose, hanging crooked against one of his lapels. The humidity has left his hair a feathery mess of red-gold. I watch his hand on the gear stick, knuckles bumping out whenever he changes gear. The air smells like exhaust and damp cement and Noiz’s cologne. 

“I didn’t know you could drive,” I say. Like everything Noiz owns, the car is new, expensive, and doesn’t really suit him. 

Noiz looks at me in a quick flash of pale eyes. “I learned in Japan. German cars are weird.” 

He keeps looking at me. Checking to make sure I’m alright or to make sure my eyes aren’t glowing? “How did you find me?” 

Noiz steers us onto a bridge with a name I can’t read. “Ren.” 

Panic flies down my spine. “Ren! Where--!” 

“Your bag’s in the back. He’s fine.” 

I won’t be satisfied until I can feel his fuzzy head against my hand, but right now I don’t want Noiz to know how totally incapable I am of maneuvering my body in any meaningful way right now. 

“What were you doing out there?” 

I say nothing. 

“Aoba, I’m not fucking around!” 

I look at him, stunned. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him raise his voice before. Definitely not to me. 

I cross my arms and angle my body away. “I wanted my fucking headphones.” 

I expect him to laugh at me, but he just blows out a slow breath. “I wish you would have told me you were so unhappy.” 

“I did!” 

“You just kept saying you were tired and jet lagged.” 

“I am tired and jet lagged!” I kick one of my filthy shoes up against the dash, wanting to piss him off, but I should know better. Noiz doesn’t give a shit about his stuff. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk to me about keeping secrets, _Wilhelm_.” 

That gets a reaction. Noiz takes his eyes off the road and puts them on me. All over me. From the top of my head to the tip of my filthy shoes. I feel a glow of satisfaction. Now that I have his attention, I put the window down further so the wind forces my hair off my forehead. “I want you to take me up somewhere high.” 

-

Noiz tells me the sign says “Scenic Outlook”, but at night there isn’t much to look out at. Just the city lights swallowed in fog, a glowing mass of a creature. A handrail on the edge of the road is the only thing preventing a long fall down a steep, scraggly hill. Noiz had directed his GPS to bring us here; he’s never been to this side of the city. If we were in the Old District, I could bring us to the tea shop on Aoyagi Street, the Black Needle, the old playground where I used to wait for Gran to get done with work. Noiz doesn’t have places like that--places that mean something to him. The only ones he explored as a kid were on the net, and the room where he grew up. His castle and his prison. 

It’s even breezier up here but we get out of the car anyway and stand at the edge, the wind making grabs at my hair and Noiz’s jacket, pulling it away from his hips in rhythmic snaps. It’s not raining anymore, but the world is so wet, the storm still so alive in the air that it might as well be. Inside me Sly is curled up and drowsy, but I still feel him all the way through my bloodstream. 

“He’s the part of me that uses Scrap.” I wrap my hands over the porous wooden handrail. “I think he used to come out all the time when I was younger, before my accident. Or--or he _was_ me, then.” 

Noiz is looking out over the city, but I know he’s listening. 

“What Toue and those scientists did...whatever it was, I think they made him.” My tongue is so dry it’s sticking to the roof of my mouth. “He’s a monster. He--he’s all the worst parts of me. I thought that now that Morphine and the Oval Tower are gone, he would disappear. But he hasn’t. And I don’t think he will.” 

“I think you’re wrong.” 

I look at him. 

“I mean--the part about him being a monster. Or, any more monstrous than anyone else’s.” 

“Anyone else’s what?” All of my extremities have gone tingly. 

“Anyone else’s bad side. Or--carnal side. The part that wants to scream and fuck and burn things down.” 

He examines his nails, one finger at a time. “Everyone has parts of them they’d rather not acknowledge.” He shrugs. “Yours just happens to be heavy artillery.” 

I stare at him, mouth open wide enough to swallow a raindrop. I’d been expecting him to be disgusted, or at least to tell me that I’m just insane. But here he is discussing Sly like a science project, like something worth taking seriously. 

He says, “You were totally different the first time we played Rhyme, and not just because you used Scrap. It’s like you were a whole different person.” He adjusts the band of his watch. The wind is nearly strong enough to blow us both over. “He’s the parts of you that you’re afraid of.” 

“Of course I’m afraid! When I get migraines I rip people’s brains apart!” I swat my bangs out of my eyes, and when I look back up Noiz is right on top of me. 

“Noiz--!” 

He grabs my wrists. “That’s not the part I mean.” 

“Noiz!” I struggle, but he’s strong and I’m exhausted. My back hits the guardrail and it shudders under me. My stomach swoops, remembering the abyss behind me, wind tying my hair into ragged snarls. Above us, an airplane's lights blink through the cloud cover on its serene journey across the sky. 

Noiz's fingers tighten, grinding down on the bones of my wrist. He pushes a thigh between my legs and I gasp, unconsciously rutting against the pressure. “This part,” he says against my ear. “The part that wants to be forced down and fucked in the dirt.” 

Dizziness swells inside me, and when I open my mouth to say no, you’re wrong, stop it, something else comes out entirely. “You know me too well,” it breathes. I struggle against it. 

Noiz’s eyes devour me. “No, don't fight him down. I want to meet him.” 

I shake my head wildly. “You don’t.” 

“I won’t let him hurt me.” 

“You don’t have to let him do anything, Noiz! He can make you!” 

Noiz's calm is unflinching. “I already told you that I want every part of you. Whoever it is--you, the other Aoba, or the both of you together. If it comes from you, it could never freak me out.” 

“That a fact?” Heat blooms across my cheeks. “ _LET GO_.” 

Noiz drops my wrists, eyes widening. He stumbles back. Then he shakes his head. “You don’t scare me.” 

“Don’t I?” 

I shove at his chest and he goes down easy. Maybe he let me do it. Or maybe he’s just not used to me fighting back. I plant my knees on his chest, slapping one hand to his throat, and I know that with the wind in my hair and the Scrap-glow of my eyes I must look wild. Inhuman. 

I yank him up by the tie, his chest shuddering beneath me as he fights for breath. “You want me to be yours. You want to fuck me until I can’t move.” 

Noiz’s eyes burn into mine. 

I grin. Then I flow into his mind and I _push_ , just a little. Not enough to hurt, just enough to tease. A reminder of how easily I could render him down to nothing. His breath sucks in through his teeth fast enough to whistle. 

I put my mouth right next to his ear. “Are you taking me home, or what?” 

-

Noiz drives with the windows all the way down, even when it starts to rain again. He doesnt’t even notice. It could be the lingering effects of Scrap, or it could just be my hand on his thigh, drawing slow circles as a deterrent to going the speed limit. My pulse thrums through me like a living creature,and I am high on the smell of the rain. I don’t feel like myself and yet I do, irresistibly, unflinchingly. Ourselves. Myself. I don’t know who I am. 

The house is huge and dark and silent, and we drag each other through the halls and up the stairs. I don’t know how we make it to his bedroom, or why we bother. We could fuck in any of these rooms and no one would care. This is our ghost town. 

Back at the hotel Noiz had said it’s up to me whether or not he takes the last of his piercings out, and I’d told him I don’t care either way, but that’s such a damn lie. I love them. I love tugging on them with my teeth and hearing his breath hitch, I love feeling them scrape the roof of my mouth when I swallow him down. The blaze of sensation up my spine when he’s inside me, just on the edge of pain. 

Who am I kidding. I love it when it hurts. 

Sly isn’t speaking in my head, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t here. He’s more present than ever, but we’re finally mingling, blending together rather than piling against each other like oil and water. For once there is no us, there’s just _me_. 

Noiz’s lips part as I push him down on his back. Even he can tell something's different about this. I pull my shirt over my head, arching my back, grinding down against him. He might be ahead of me in every aspect of his life--he has a job and he has money and he knows where he’s going. He can speak three languages and knows his way around the city and isn’t struggling with a fractured psyche and a power he can barely control. 

But here, with this. I can be his match. 

I can feel my mind slipping away into the red-tinted delirium I associate with Scrap and with Sly and with losing control, turning me into nothing but a hungry vessel for sensation, but for once it isn’t terrifying. It’s exhilarating. I’m not going to scare Noiz--we’ve seen the very worst of each other. 

I remember what Koujaku said. _Trauma makes you feel close to people, but how much do you actually know about him?_

He’s right. I barely know his life or his history. But I know his mind. And I know his body. 

I push his legs apart and yank at his belt, leaning down to suck bites into his thighs as soon as I get them in the open. He curses and snarls his fingers in my hair. Usually, I don’t like that, but today it sends bolts of arousal lancing down my spine. Everywhere he touches makes me arch and twist, like my nerves have been turned up to maximum. 

I push my tongue into him and he swears, jerking on the mattress. I’ve never done it to him before but I get the feeling it isn’t the first time I’ve performed the act itself--memories are pushing at me, threatening at the surface like floating bodies. Eventually I’ll have to pick through them, but right now all I want is to drown. 

We wrestle our clothes all the way off, his jacket and dress pants tossed to the floor with my torn jeans and muddy t-shirt. The scabs on my palms reopen and I smear blood up the center of his chest in a long rusty line. It looks black in the dark. 

“Fuck.”

I sigh as I sink down on his fingers, slick with lube, working in and out. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t quite recognize me. Everything that ties me to myself has been undone. Around me is the darkness of Noiz’s room, but so is the vast, unexplored territory of my own mind, and I know that if I wanted to I could wander its corridors and towers, walk barefoot over its beaches. Instead I climb back up Noiz’s body and sink my teeth into his shoulder. 

He shouts and claws at my back. “Yes, fuck yes.” 

My laughter bubbles up like a liquid. “We sure are made for each other,” I say into his throat, and bite there too. 

I ride him with my hands planted on his chest, smearing the blood into sticky fingerprints. His hands wrap around my hips tight enough to leave marks and he fucks up into me in hard, athletic snaps. I sit back to prop myself up on his thighs instead, baring my throat at the ceiling, shifting the pressure inside of me until I’m shaking. 

He gets me on my stomach, holding me down with one hand fisted in my hair. I struggle, not because I want to get away but because it feels so goddamn good to fight. Noiz knows that if I really wanted him off I could make him--I could make him do anything--so he doesn’t stop. When he slides back inside me I moan his name and rake my nails into the sheets, holding on tight. 

When I come it lights up bright behind my eyes and I shout into the pillow, thoughts unspooling into a long line of incoherent energy. I feel the hot, tense presence of Noiz’s mind as acutely as his hips smacking against me, but I stop before I cause any damage. I wash up against the walls rather than knock them down. Behind me, Noiz shudders. I know he can feel it too. 

-

I’ve always thought the phrase “my head is spinning” was a silly expression, but now I lie next to Noiz in the torn-up bed, the world tilting around me in lavish circles. I feel drunker than I ever get from alcohol. 

Noiz is flat on his back with one arm over his head, fingers tapping idly at the headboard. Marks stand out fresh on his neck, a few blossoming into full-on bruises. He looks limp and shell-shocked and very young. 

“Are...are you okay?” 

Noiz looks at me, eyes narrowed, and I’m afraid that he’s realized the person he brought back home with him isn’t who he thought he was. After all that’s happened I can’t really claim I’m a normal human. Or a human at all. Then his grin spreads from one end of his face to ther other.

“I’m fucking incredible.” He touches a particularly nasty mark over his collarbone. Looking at it freaks me out and fills me with a buzzing satisfaction, which also freaks me out. I want to taste every mark, and I also want to cover them up and never look at Noiz again.

He’s still smiling at me. “You’re amazing.” 

I shrug, simultaneously pleased and horrified. The feelings are still separate, but their edges are little more indistinct, blurring like clouds. To distract myself I say, “I was wondering about something.” 

Noiz makes a questioning noise. 

“If your real name is Wilhelm--,” Which is a word I can barely pronounce, by the way, “And your Rhymer tag is “Rabbit Head”, then where did 'Noiz' come from?” 

Some of the fuzzy affection leaves his eyes, the usual Noiz flowing back, internal and intense. 

“I made it up.” 

I roll closer to him. “Well, yeah. I figured that.” 

“I made it up on the spot, I mean.” He doesn't meet my eyes, talking directly to my chin. “When I waited in your room. You were so...I was surprised.” 

“You were surprised!” I huff. “I’m the one who had to deal with a mouthy kid breaking my stuff and threatening my allmate!” 

Another flickering smile. “I didn’t expect you to look the way you did. Exactly like your Rhyme avatar. And you felt the same way, too. Like...overwhelming.” 

I remember how afraid I’d been, and how angry. I was so done with being hassled. 

He trails his fingers up the curve of my arm. “I’d stopped bothering to wish I could feel things a long time ago. But I wanted to feel it when I touched you.” 

“When you _attacked me_.” 

“Right. Yeah. I panicked. So ‘Noiz’.” 

I can’t help the laughter. “So why not tell me later?” 

“My name you mean? When, exactly? When you were carrying me out of the Oval Tower, or when you were bouncing on my dick at the hospital--?” 

I shove at his arm. “Fucking kid.” 

He laces our fingers together. “I kept panicking around you. You didn’t act like anyone I’d ever met.” 

That makes me laugh harder. “You panic...really calmly.” 

Another shrug. “I just don’t do it where anyone can see. That’s what I was doing today.” 

I shiver at his thumb playing circles across my wrist. “Today?” 

“This morning. I...didn’t go to work. I just went and sat somewhere. I had to think.” 

Ice creeps over my chest. Is he having second thoughts? About me? About us? “What were you thinking about?” 

“You.” He pushes his bangs out of his eyes, letting them flutter slowly back down. “About how I devoted myself to making sure I could be good enough for you.” 

Heat hits my cheeks. He’d said something to that effect back on the island, but never so explicitly. “You--that’s so weird. You--you don’t have to worry about dumb shit like that.” 

“I know that. Just--.” His hands go to my shoulders and then slide up to cup my cheeks, and now he’s almost on top of me and my heart starts pounding, certain overworked parts of myself taking slightly painful interest. “I’ve never had--you’re the first person I’ve ever cared about keeping. Everyone else…” His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth. 

“You--.” Stubbornness tries to push its way past the sleepy arousal. “You aren’t _keeping_ me.” 

“Yeah, but I want to.” His voice drops, almost too quiet to hear even though he’s right next to me. “I wanna give you everything you want.” 

“I don’t want anything--.” 

“Yeah, I know. But I want you to. And I want you waiting for me when I come home and I want to make you cry and beg me to touch you, and I want to hear that little thing your voice does when it’s too much--.” 

“Noiz--!” 

“Yeah, like that.” His smile is ravenous. “I want you to be mine and nobody else’s. And I want you to fuck me like you just did every goddamn day of my life.” He rolls his hips and I realize that we’re both on our way to hard-ons. My whole body is flushed hot and I’m breathing in quick gasps. “So...just know that you aren’t the only one with a shitty, covetous son of a bitch in your head.” 

That shocks laughter out of me, and I accidentally spit in Noiz’s face. He flinches and I groan, burying my smile in his neck. Hearing him say all that stuff is really scary, because on the one hand it sounds awful--like every terrible stereotype Koujaku and Gran could throw at me for running away with a rich boy. But at the same time...there’s a part of me that likes it. Noiz being so into me that all he wants is just to have me around. He's still looking at me in that soft, rare way, and I’m not exactly sure who is looking out of my eyes, but that’s fine. He wants all of us. 

_smart kid, right? and I still maintain we’d look great in diamonds._

The thought drifts through, quieter than before, and I’m not actually sure who it belongs. Not that the distinction is really worth that much. I’m pretty sure that Noiz is right about a lot of it. Gran could probably tell me more. And maybe Clear. 

_and me. i got a couple insider opinions for you, dude_. 

Yeah. And him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again, Cerasi! I hope you enjoyed. 
> 
> come visit me on tumblr and autoeuphoric.


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